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Wine Tours

Custom wine tours

We also make custom designed wine tours – on-demand tours for you and a group of friends, for your company (maybe to scout new winegrowers?), for a special event… We can combine winery visits and wine touring with other activities: gastronomic workshops, visit to an oyster farm, truffles hunting, cheese making, and more. We’ve done tours for wine clubs, for sommelier educations, for corporate events, for wine importers, for wine course study groups… just to mention a few.

You'll get a tour designed exactly according to your requirements and tastes, made by one of the most experienced wine people in the business. We personally visit some 200 wineries and taste thousands of wines every year; we write on wine for various wine magazines (we had more than 30 articles published last year); in 2007 we published a ground breaking book on the wine of the Languedoc and this year we have another one coming. And we have organised hundreds of wine tours over the years.

 More info on the BKWine wine tours here!

Wine tours in Finnish

 □  Producers

Domaine Monplezy, Pezenas, Languedoc

They make Vin de Pays des Cotes de Thongue, one of the better known vin de pays denominations in the Languedoc. Grapes are mainly syrah, grenache, carignan, cinsault, merlot, roussanne and marsanne. They have 22 ha of vineyards with not very fertile soil (which is of course good for the quality of the wine). It is beautifully located, surrounded by the typical Languedoc garrigue with it aromatic herbs. The Languedoc flag flutters in the wind in the yard and the wines have a very definite Languedoc character. Good fruit and generous wines. Try for instance the cuvée Felicité that they harvest by hand, made from carignan, grenache and syrah. It gets a short aging in oak barrels. Spicy aromas mixed with some liquorice and freshly roast coffee. Perfect with a roast leg of lamb or grilled lamb chops!
Click here for address and more recommendations.

Domaine Marronniers, Chablis

We find Domaine Marronniers in the small village of Préhy, a short drive from Chablis itself. There Bernard Legland and his wife welcome you for a wine tasting of a range of Chablis wines. The domaine has some 20 ha of vineyards: petit Chablis, Chablis, and Chablis premier cru. Bernard is fond of the crispy, clean style of Chablis so none of his wines are aged in oak. “Why would we want to hide what we get from our soil?” he asks. In his view, Chablis has a unique soil, that makes Chablis a true vin de terroir, with a steeliness and minerality that resembles no other. If you don’t believe him, try his very drinkable, crispy Petit Chablis 2008 (6.5€ at the cellar door) or the Chablis 2007 with very refreshing aromas of citrus fruit and a nice minerality. Very good. If you are looking for something a bit more complex you can try the 1er Cru Montmains 2007 (11.50€), still a bit reserved but with very good development potential. Or a Chablis Vieilles Vignes 2005 (9€) already with a bit of maturity and a nice, honeyed character.
Click here for address and more recommendations.

Read about more recommended producers on the site: Favourite Producers

 □  Wine Bars and Restaurants

Restaurant Cap Sud, Tours
A charming little restaurant in the heart of Tours in the Loire valley, located between the Cathedral and the Vieux Tours. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays. In short: very high ambitions and moderate prices! It’s an innovative cuisine, with inspired presentations of the dishes. The emphasis is on southern French raw materials and products, lots of shell fish and vegetables. At lunch time you can get a three course menu for around 15 euro, in the evening they have a “small” menu (not on Sat) for just under 20€, and one for 38€. The wine list offers a range of wines from all over France, starting at 20€. They have several interesting Vouvrays on the list.
Click here for address and more recommendations.

Au Vieux Comptoir, Bar à vins – Restaurant, Paris 1
A popular restaurant on a side street to the busy rue Rivoli. Nice atmosphere and very friendly and helpful staff (well worth underlining!). At lunch time you can have Today’s Special for 14€, traditional French cooking, e.g. a ‘hachis parmentier’ (a gratin of mashed potatoes with minced meat), excellent to try in winter when you need to warm up. If you like beef you should try their tempting côtes de boeuf, a giant ‘beef chop’ from cows of the Maine Anjou race (but you should be two persons sharing – it weighs in at 1.4 kilos!) with sauce béarnaise. Or try the excellent charcuteries from Alsace, the Jura of the Basque countries, the veal from Corrèze or the scallops. All is made from prime raw material. They have an interesting wine list with, unusually, many wines served by the glass. A bistro one will come back to!
Click here for address and more recommendations.

 □  Wine of the Month

Criteria: an interesting wine (not too cheap) and one that you can enjoy with dinner or friends (not too expensive). And very good!

Åsa’s wine of the month:

Rosé du Coteau from the agricultural institute in Aosta – cheap rose with class

This month’s wine comes from Valle d’Aosta in northern Italy. The Rosé d’Aosta is made by the Institut Agricole Régional. They frequently experiment with various techniques in the vineyards. It is an easy-drinking rosé made from the gamay grape. The vines are planted in a vineyard at 800 m altitude on a steep slope. It goes well with starters or simpler main courses that are not too fat or heavy and not too strong flavours. It is very fresh with a hint of bitterness in the finish that avoids that it gets boring. The colour is light with some beautiful hints of brownish yellow. Excellent value for money. Approx 5 euro. www.iaraosta.it

Jack's wine of the month:

A Amarone 2006 from Alpha Zeta

It is a dark November evening, just a plain weekday, and you need some red to go with your parmesan that you just picked up at the cheese shop. The scenario requires quite a substantial red wine and the solution is at hand: Try a A Amarone 2006 from Alpha Zeta (~10€ for a half bottle). It gives you lots of fruity flavours, good concentration, quite dense, with a good long finish. It survives even the stronger cheeses. In spite of the high alcohol (15%) the wine is balanced and gives you a lot of character for a relatively modest price. You can also keep it in your cellar for a few years but it’s delicious to cheese this November!
 

”Let the children taste wine”
In many places this is a controversial statement, not least in Sweden, our country of origin. But there’s recently been quite some discussion on that theme on the internet. It started with Dr Vino (Tyler Colman) who wrote about his six year old son coming home from school with a pamphlet bunching beer, wine, Marijuana, crack etc together as dangerous drugs. The post has (today) 54 comments. That sparked Gabriella Opaz (Catavino) to write a post where she argues for the reintroduction of the word “experimentation” into the American dictionary (Gabriella has many talents, one of which is to write strange headlines). She criticises the American attitude of forbidding things (e.g. anyone under 18/20/21, depending on state, tasting wine) and compares it to how children are brought up in Europe, where, she says, there’s nothing secret or forbidden about wine. Instead the children learn about wine at the dinner table, and taste wine at an early age together with the family. This “European” attitude doesn’t create the aura around wine as something forbidden, dangerous and therefore exciting, as is the case in the USA, that leads to many alcohol related problems. According to Gabriella. There are quite a few interesting comments on Gabriella’s article too. As a follow up to that, Finkus Bripp (a pseudonym for a Canadian sommelier living in Germany) wrote about his experience growing up in an Italian family in Canada, where at every dinner there was wine on the table, wine that he was given a taste of already at a young age. When he grew older, at the age when youngsters start ‘partying’ he was didn’t understand the attitude of his friends at school when they wanted to raid the wine or liquor cabinet and get ‘drunk’ for the party. For him, wine was just something you had with dinner and there wasn’t any particular fun involved in the ‘drunk’ part of it for him. This is hardly an argumentation that goes down well in many countries today, certainly not in Sweden or England. The Swedish anti-alcohol propaganda makes it clear that if anyone under 18 (the legal drinking age, but you have to be 20 to shop in the state owned wine stores) is given a taste of alcohol they will be only a small step away from alcoholism and social misery. The information also makes it quite clear that the main purpose of drinking is getting drunk. I think that I need to explain to Gabriella that Sweden, and probably England too, are not part of Europe. At least not her Europe.

What do you think? Comment on "Let the children taste wine" here!

Amazon.com closes down it’s wine shop
It was big new in ecommerce when Amazon.com decided to launch a wine shop. but even before the shop has started they have decided to close down the wine sale project at Amazon. We haven’t seen an official explanation for it, but industry observers think that it has to do with logistical and regulatory difficulties. In the USA it is very complicated to sell wines from one state to another. There are many rules and regulations (and different ones in each state) that stipulates how it must be done, sometimes requiring impossible logistics or other restrictive requirements. Unfortunately, since this severely restricts the choice of wine for consumers in many states. The system was created after the prohibition and remains largely in place. It is of course defended by many of the established players, whose positions are protected by it. www.winebusiness.com

White wine is dangerous for your teeth
The high acidity found in most white wines can damage your teeth, according to a report in Nutrition Research. The acidity in the wine attacks the calcium and erodes the enamel. If you eat e.g. cheese with the wine the effect may be lessened. This is perhaps not big news. Have you ever been to a tasting of a large number of Alsace wines or Champagnes you may have noticed the unpleasant feeling in the teeth afterwards. To avoid sever damages one should avoid brushing the teeth after drinking or tasting the wines, it is suggested. Good advice, we think, that our dentist agrees with. Last time we were there she recommended a new type of tooth paste (called Pro-émail) that supposedly helps rebuild the enamel. news.bbc.co.uk

Box bar?
Can you make BiBs trendy? The first “pop up bar” is what they call it. The wine importer Philipson Söderberg has launched a wine bar dedicated to the “celebration of bag-in-box wines” in the centre of Stockholm. They will mainly (only?) be serving Fleur du Cap wine from plastic bags in cartons. It sounds about as inspired as if you launched a restaurant proclaiming to use only frozen raw materials – nothing fresh – in the cooking. Or if you organised a concert and only provided a transistor radio as a loudspeaker. Bizarre. Some kind of inverted snobbism? http://boxbar.se/ (Trivia: more than 50% of all wine sold in the monopoly wine shops in Sweden is sold in bag-in-box.)

Free samples and free tastings
One of the discussions that came up on the recent European Wine Bloggers Conference (#EWBC) was about free wine samples: should bloggers accept free tasting samples from importers or wine producers? It was debated in all directions. Some said that wine bloggers should not accept samples. Others meant that it was OK to accept samples provided you made ‘full disclosure’ (“this wine tastes excellent, and btw I’ve had it as a free sample”…). We don’t agree. For us, this is rather simple:

1) wine bloggers (and we considers ourselves as such) are no different than others who write about wine in e.g. printed media,

2) it is impossible to write professionally (or on a certain level, even if not professionally) about wine without accepting various kinds of freebies,

3) what counts is the writer’s ethics and personal integrity and stringency.

Conclusion: wine bloggers (like other writers) can, or should, accept free samples and there is no need to ‘disclose’ that certain wines have been received as free samples. If you write positively about a wine just because you have received it as a sample (perhaps in the hope of getting more?) you will with time loose your credibility as a critic and commentator. To have a disclosure policy or at every occasion specify that this is based on a free sample is futile. What is the reader supposed to think? “Ah, this comment is based on a free sample so I don’t think it’s quite neutral and not as accurate as this critic’s usual comments”? Either you have a good writer’s ethic and then disclosure does not make any difference, or you are a weak soul and corrupt (unduly kind to samples) and then it won’t make any difference to do ‘disclosure’ either.

Compare it to e.g. sports journalists or music critics who write in papers – should they specify in their articles that “I have had a free ticket to this event”? No, we don’t think so. Everyone takes it for granted. (In the US the FTC, Federal Trade Commission, recently published a recommendation that bloggers should be obliged to give disclosure for samples, and other freebies. The strange thing with this is that the FTC does not require the same kind of disclosure from the printed press. Incomprehensible.)

In other words: dear wine producers and wine importers, do send us samples, or invite us to tastings and other such things! In reality, with full disclosure, we receive very few wine samples (but a bit more often go to press lunches or tastings). If we like the wine we taste we will write a good review. If we don’t like it we will not review it or perhaps write something a bit critical. Does this mean that we may be influenced by marketing efforts? Yes, of course but there’s nothing negative in that. If we do get a sample we are more likely to taste the wine and write about it (if we like it) than if we don’t receive a sample, which means we’re influenced by the marketing. Is it a problem? No, we don’t think so, as long as we are honest with our writing and don’t write up things positively just because we’ve had a freebie.

Actually, I very much doubt that any serious wine writer can honestly claim to have a “no freebies” policy. One who never accepts samples. Never goes to free wine tastings. Never accept lunch invitations. Never travel to vineyards on paid expenses or accepts tasting samples at wineries, etc. I don’t think such a writer exists. So, what do you think? Read on: 3 days in Lisbon and all I did was piss off a bull and Dear FTC: I take samples (W Blake Gray), and Julia Sevenich My Policy on "Freebies" or a view from a non-wine person David Sanger Photographer.

What do you think? Comment on "Free samples and free tastings" here!

Parsed wine
Are you looking for a nice gift to give to your enemy? Perhaps one of the strange decanters made by the artist Etienne Meneau can fit the bill? The shape of the decanters is reminiscent of the root system of a vine (or an upside down tree). Each can contain one normal bottle of wine. The price is a little bit over 2000 euro. On the site there is an instruction on how to use them: “after a short training you can perfectly pour wine in a glass without any drop anywhere”. To your enemy? Can you imagine washing it! http://the-strange-decanter.blogspot.com/  

Antinori makes wine in Romania
“[Romaina] has all the right ingredients to produce great wines: perfect climate, very good exposure, great terroirs.” Piero Antinori says to Decanter. He has just launched his first Romanian wine, Cantus Primus 2007, made in a joint venture with British wine importer Halewood International. The wine will retail for around €8-9. The vineyards will in time cover 106 ha. More info: www.decanter.com

Rosé port
There’s a new category of port wine: rosé. The Port Wine Institute (IDVP) has approved rosé port as a denomination. Already last year Croft launched a rosé port: Croft Pink. Formally, it has been considered a very lightly coloured ruby but now it has its own category. Apart from Croft’s there has not been many rosé ports available, except an own label brand in some British super markets. The rosé must by made by the saignée method, i.e. a short maceration on the skins before the lightly coloured grape juice is separated from the skinks. In other words, it is not allowed to make it by blending red and white, as is allowed in Champagne but in few other European wine districts. We have not tasted it but reports indicate that we have not missed a great deal.

”The world’s smartest way to sell alcohol”
Usually, this is a story that would only appear in the Swedish edition of the BKWine Brief but this is so outrageous so we have to share it with everyone. In a recent issue of one of the biggest daily paper the Swedish monopoly retailer of wine and spirits, Systembolaget, run a two page as. No, it was not to sell some good wines. It was to proclaim that they are the world’s best retailer and that the Swedish people should be happy that they have a monopoly market. Because otherwise we would all be alcoholics. So this is a monopoly (Systembolaget, a state owned company) that spends about 2.5 million euro each year, according to their previous CEO, on “marketing”. And marketing in their view is to tell people

a) Systembolaget is the world’s best retailer,

b) Sweden has one of the world’s best selections of wines and spirits (a bit short of 2000 items;. Berry Brothers, alone, in London has some 4000 items. Can you follow the logic? No, we neither. Some years ago they hired Jancis Robinson to do a study of their range. No, I don't know what Jancis' conclusion was. The report is secret and classified information and the monopoly has declined to share it with us),

c) without the monopoly all Swedes would drown in misery, we would have 1,600 more deaths each year, 14,000 more wife beatings and 16 million more sick leave days.

We’re not joking. This is exactly what they say in the ad. That’s based on what they call a “scientific research report”. That report is the creation of a dozen or so alcohol and drug researchers, led by Harold Holder of Berkley, California, who sat down around a table and started guessing: “So how much do we think that alcohol consumption will increase if they start selling it in grocery stores. Oh, I’d say perhaps 30% more or so… What do you think?” Scientific report, yes indeed. They also claim that John D Rockefeller sponsored a major study to see what model for alcohol sales was best and that it concluded that “the Swedish model” was the best. That when prohibition was over many US states introduced alcohol monopolies and most of those are still in existence (that’s very typical for the deceitful facts they use: “many states” introduced monopolies and “most of those” still exist). Some years ago there was a study that considered that it was a peril to democracy when government agencies (or government controlled companies such as the Systembolaget monopoly) took on the role of propagandists. It is the role of the people to decide the polices and for the state to execute them. Not the other way around. The Systembolaget ignores it of course. In Sweden the Systembolaget alcohol monopoly spends 2.5 million euros a year on forming public opinion. No wonder people think they’re great.

What do you think? Comment on "The world's smartest way to sell alcohol" here!

The founder of the Spanish Wine Academy wanted by Interpol
The headline only refers to one of the aspect of this strange story. Pancho Campo founded some years back the Spanish Wine Academy, a training and event organising profit motivated corporation (and not as one might guess from the name an official Spanish body). Campo is also the organiser of the wine hullabaloo Wine Futures that is taking place in Rioja at this very moment (November 13) with speakers such as Robert Parker, Jancis Robinson and Gary Vaynerchuk. It turns out that Campo has been sentenced to one year in prison in absentia in Dubai and that there is an international arrest warrant on him. When the news of this broke Campo decided to relinquish the management of the Wine Futures congress and hand over the responsibility to someone else (his brother in law if we remember right). Jim Budd, an investigative English wine journalist (if ever there were such a thing), has delved into this affair and found that e.g. Campo has been accused by his business partner in Dubai to have “misappropriated” 640,000€, that he was forced to surrender his passport to a Dubai court (so as not to disappear), but left the country using another passport (since he has double nationality). Budd also poses the question (to himself and to Campo) where the funding for the Spanish Wine Academy came from. It is not very difficult to read between the lines and get the impression that it may have been from the Dubai affair. Budd has so far not had an answer from Campo. You can read more about this wine thriller of international dimensions (e.g. Campos MW credentials) on Jim Budd’s blog: Jim’s Loire.

Why white wine goes better with fish
White wine with fish is one of the best known rules of thumbs in food and wine matching. Researchers at Mercian Corp in Fujisawa in Japan has discovered why red wine and fish don’t marry well. Apparently, when the iron contents in the wine reaches 2 milligrams per litre or more there’s a chemical reaction that creates unpleasant fishy tastes. The researches are not quite certain with what the iron reacts but think that it might be with an unsaturated fatty acid that exists in some types of fish and shellfish. And since red wine generally has higher iron contents than white wines it is the red-with-fish combination that does not work. However, not all red wines have such high iron contents and not all fish/shellfish produce this result. So the conclusion is: if you want red wine with fish you just have to try it and see if it works. As reported in sciencenow.sciencemag.org

A Bordeaux chateau goes up in smoke
Figuratively speaking. Chateau Labegorce Zédé (Médoc, Bordeaux) will cease to exist as a wine as of 2009. Both Labegorce Zédé and Chateau Labegorce are owned by the family of the deceased Hubert Perrodo. The two wines will now be combined and be sold under the label Chateau Labegorce. The family also owns the Chateau Marquis d’Alesme Becker. that wine will henceforth be sold under the label Chateau Marquis d’Alesme (without Becker). Some of the grapes from the Labegorce wines will in the future be used for the Marquis d’Alesme. This is quite interesting as an illustration of the fact that the chateau names in Bordeaux is really nothing else than wine brands. Provided the grapes come from the correct appellation (and even that with some flexibility sometimes) you can use them for whatever chateau wine you want. A consequence of this is of course that the classifications (e.g. the famous 1855 one) are really a classification of brands, nothing else. Interesting, isn’t it? www.decanter.com

Organic vineyards increasing in France
3.3% of all French vineyards are cultivated organically. It adds up to a total of 28 000 ha. The acreage increased with 25% in 2008. the agricultural ministry has set a target of 20% of all agricultural land in 2020. Vine growing is ahead of other farming when it comes to organic culture: 3.3% of vineyards compared to 3% for all farm land. On the other hand (non-organic) vineyards account for a disproportionate amount of the use of chemicals used on farm land. Three areas account for two thirds of all organic vineyards:
- Languedoc Roussillon, with 8337 ha (+36 %)
- Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, 6674 ha (+26 %)
- Aquitaine (with e.g. Bordeaux), 3763 ha (+23 %)
More info: www.vitisphere.com

Buy an organic vineyard
If you feel tempted to invest in a vineyard and winery, and in particular in an organic one, then there are three currently for sale at Vignobles Investissment: One in Minervois La Livière with 80 hectares of grounds (2.5-5M €), one with 40 ha with panoramic views over the landscape in the Cevennes (1.5-2.5M €) and a third one also in the Languedoc-Roussillon but with the vines on vins de pays land, 72 ha (1.5-2.5M €). But don’t expect to have a calm and quite country life in the south of France shade if you buy a vineyard… More info www.vignobles-investissement.com

Wine sales up again – in the US
Sales of wine in October were up 7% according to numbers released by Nielsen for the US market. Sales dropped sharply at the beginning of the year but picked up a tiny bit in September. This positive trend are confirmed by the October numbers. On the other hand, wine sales seems very cyclical with a big peak in December and January. Comparing the 2009 numbers with 2008 shows that this year’s sales are very similar to the sales volumes (in dollar value) last year, which seems to contradict that the wine sector in the US has been hard hit by the “crisis”. More info: www.winebusiness.com

Choosing the Right Wine
By: Beverley Blanning
Publisher: Teach Yourself

This is a soft cover, pocket size book on how to teach yourself about wine. Small, simple (no glossy paper, virtually no illustrations) and very good. One of the best introductions to learning about wine an in particular wine tasting we’ve seen in quite some time. The author explains the basics and then goes on to more advanced subjects. Her approach is also refreshingly free from snobbism and “wine nerdery”. This is a book that in simple steps can teach you how better to appreciate and understand wine – a book for the curious. One can of course have opinions about the opinions voiced in the book – but that’s what wine is about. Opinions and discussion. The first part of the book deals with how to taste wines, including some practical exercises of course. Part two goes more into details on the tastes of wines with a closer look on grape varieties, climate, winemaking and other things that influence the result. Part three is a very short overview of some of the most important wine regions including flavour profiles and tasting exercises. The last part of the book goes into practical aspects like wine and food, buy and serving wine. An excellent introduction, easy and pleasant to read, for the aspiring wine lover.
Click here for more book reviews on my site. You will also find links to on-line book shops on that page.

The Ultimate Austrian Wine Guide (2009/2010 edition)
By: Peter Moser
Publisher: Falstaff Publications

We’ve previously reviewed this book, in an earlier edition, so this is just an update. And it’s well worth mentioning again! The title tells it all. This is the ultimate guide to Austrian wines, as far as we know. The bulk of the book is made up of wine producer profiles. We can’t claim to be able to judge if it is an extensive coverage or not, but what is there is very informative. The profiles are organised according to wine regions. Each region has an introductory text with maps that are quite detailed and useful, even for the traveller on location. A short introduction explains grape varieties, rules and regulations etc. There’s even a section at the end with addresses to importers of Austrian wines across the world. We certainly hope it will contribute to making the excellent Austrian wines better known outside of the country. A good thing the book exists in English!
Click here for more book reviews on my site. You will also find links to on-line book shops on that page.

History of Wine Words
By: Charles Hodgson
Publisher: P2Peak Press

The best use for this book is probably as a dinner conversation piece. Or as something to leaf through idly in the sofa. It a dictionary of wine words – each word is described with a bit of history and sometimes an amusing story. You can learn, for example, that ullage, the empty space between wine and cork, comes from the French ouillage, meaning to top up, which in itself has its roots in the Latin oculus, meaning ‘eye’. And the eye supposedly refers to the empty air space in a barrel. Or that a ‘butt’ is not what you think but a 15th century English word for barrel (or sometimes bottle). I’d have liked to know the origins of the bung, as in the bung hole, but it’s not there unfortunately. The author is a wine lover and etymologist with his own web site at podictionary.com. Entertaining.
Click here for more book reviews on my site. You will also find links to on-line book shops on that page.

South-West France, the Wines and Winemakers
By: Paul Strang, photographs by Jason Shenai
Publisher: University of California Press

This is a book that has been in the coming for a very long time and now finally (!), is it published. Let’s start with this: if you are even remotely interested in wines from other than the big-and-famous appellations you should read this book. It covers a huge area of France, the South West (le Sud-Ouest) where you have a very large variety of wines and wine styles. It’s a very ambitious project to try and cover all of it but Paul Strang carries it off excellently. Secondly, this is really (really!) a region that deserves more attention from the wine lover. There are a few moderately well know districts, Cahors and Madiran mainly, but even those are just barely recognised by the average wine lover. The problem, as Strang points out, is that almost all wine growers are small family enterprises, with limited production and no marketing budget, so they rarely make it to the supermarket shelves – production is just too small. So you have to seek them out in specialised shops, or on location. And Strang’s book is an excellent guide to find the best wines. The bulk of the book is producer profiles, but each region also gets a thorough introduction explaining rules and regulations, grape varieties etc. Grape varieties is a subject of particular interest in this region – you can find a wealth of local, traditional varieties that exist no where else, making some very interesting and character-full wines (and some very strange wines too). It’s a pleasure to read it and think of some of the wines one has tasted, and long for some that one has not yet tried but now read about. Two gripes: why are there no captions on the photos? Really a pity. Now one has to guess what’s on the pictures. It would also have been nice with a few more photos – it’s such a beautiful region and it doesn’t quite come through. But book editors sometimes don’t like when the page number goes up and up I guess. Definitely a book to read about a region whose wines you should try.
Click here for more book reviews on my site. You will also find links to on-line book shops on that page.

Grand Crus Classés, Grands Chefs Etoilés
By: Sophie Brissaud, photo Cyril le Tourneur d’Ison & Iris Sullivan, plus many contributing chefs and sommeliers
Publisher: Editions de la Martinière

It’s logical. This is a book made to impress, about wines made to impress, and about food designed to impress. It weighs in at 3 kg, almost 400 pages, so it will certainly not pass unnoticed. The book is about 87 of the “grand crus” of Bordeaux, produced in collaboration with the Conseil des Grands Crus Classés. Each of the chateaux covered in the book is presented with a profile describing some of its history as well as some technical details about the wines. To each wine there is a matching dish, designed and prepared by a Michelin-starred chef (a different chef for each wine), presented with a detailed recipe. It’s the ultimate coffee table book, or should one say wine cabinet book in this case. All is lavishly illustrated of course. Perhaps it is a book to leisurely leaf through, a book designed to create dreams and desires?
Click here for more book reviews on my site. You will also find links to on-line book shops on that page.

L’histoire du Crémant d’Alsace ou la genèse des bulles
By: Nicole Laugel
Bublisher: Jérôme Do Bentzinger Editeur

The story about the creation of the Crémant d’Alsace appellation is an entertaining success story. AOC Crémant d’Alsace came into existence not until 1975 and now they sell 30 million bottles per year. It’s the preferred bubbly of the French after champagne. The Dopff family (from Dopff au Moulin) is the protagonist in the book – it’s the family that pioneered sparkling Alsace wine with a second fermentation in the bottle. Already in the early 1900s Julien Dopff sold wine labelled as Champagne Dopff. At the time Alsace was part of Germany but in 1918, when it became French, using the word ‘champagne’ was outlawed. Instead they had to label it under the designation “vin mousseux”. This marked the beginning of the fight against this (as it is perceived) terrible denomination, since almost any cheap bubbly plonk can be called mousseux. Finally, in 1975, the fight is won and the Alsatians are allowed to start called their wines Crémant d’Alsace. But the road to get there was long. Outdrawn discussions with authorities (always sceptical), with Champagne houses (who have since relinquished the label ‘crémant’ that used to signify a lower pressure champagne), Spaniards (who it turned out also wanted to claim the Crémant name as theirs), growers, cooperatives… The book reads well and gives a very interesting insight into the travails behind the creation of an appellation contrôlée. We are also given some details of how you make sparkling wines with different methods. At the outset it was only Dopff au Moulin and two co-operatives who made sparkling Alsace wine. Now almost every producer makes one or more bubbly cuvées.

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